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Should Firms be Allowed to Indemnify Their Employees for Sanctions?

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  • Christopher M. Snyder

Abstract

Policymakers have questioned whether firms should be allowed to indemnify their employees for personal sanctions for corporate crimes. This article provides the first formal analysis of this form of indemnification. Targeting employees with unindemnifiable sanctions carries the social cost of exposing employees of law-abiding firms to the risk of mistaken government prosecution. Deterrence is typically achieved more efficiently by sanctioning the firm alone. We find the circumstances under which the government should additionally sanction employees to be quite limited and the circumstances under which the government should ban indemnification of these sanctions to be more limited still. One circumstance is when an unindemnifiable employee sanction provides prosecutors with leverage to adjust the employee's sanction in exchange for his cooperation against the firm. (JEL K22, D82, L20) The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher M. Snyder, 2010. "Should Firms be Allowed to Indemnify Their Employees for Sanctions?," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 26(1), pages 30-53, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:26:y:2010:i:1:p:30-53
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewn027
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    Cited by:

    1. Argenton, C. & van Damme, E.E.C., 2014. "Optimal Deterrence of Illegal Behavior Under Imperfect Corporate Governance," Other publications TiSEM e037f38f-8c76-402a-bbaa-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Jensen, Frank & Nøstbakken, Linda, 2016. "A corporate-crime perspective on fisheries: liability rules and non-compliance," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(3), pages 371-392, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General

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